Television drama is rarely reflective of reality. We immerse ourselves in shows whose characters find themselves in situations more sensational and stirring than our own lives, willingly suspending our disbelief for an episode or a season.
The new ABC series The Heights, which premieres Friday night, offers something refreshing: a credible social drama that attempts to depict Australian life in its myriad forms.
The 30-episode half-hour drama is more expansive than its commercial-TV counterparts, bridging the gulf that separates real life from the whitewashed worlds of Ramsay Street and Summer Bay.
Shot in Perth and set in the fictional inner-city suburb of Arcadia Heights, the series – or at least its first four episodes, on which this review is based – challenges prescribed notions of what a soap opera should be: there’s relationships and emotional drama aplenty, but also pointed interrogations of class and identity.
Its characters live in or near Arcadia Towers, a social housing block holding firm amid its gentrifying surrounds. The action takes place in the building, its local hospital, its local school and its local pub – giving the writers the best of all TV worlds to work with. And although it shouldn’t be, the diversity of the cast is impressive, accurately reflecting the heterogeneity of Australian life without resorting to tokenism.
Bucking the trending for TV drama, in which individuals from non-European backgrounds, LGBTQI people and Australians with disabilities are chronically underrepresented, two-thirds of The Heights’ core ensemble are from diverse (Indigenous, disability, culturally and linguistically diverse) backgrounds, and more than half the speaking roles are female. The writing team is also predominantly female, and includes three Indigenous writers and three culturally and linguistically diverse writers.
But the show’s stats – while impressive – shouldn’t be taken as an end in themselves: in this case, at least, diversity makes for better, more believable TV.
Perhaps that’s because The Heights doesn’t reduce characters’ identities to their component parts. Teenager Sabine Rosso (Bridie McKim) has mild cerebral palsy, but this fact is just one facet of her life as a young woman grappling with incipient independence and life at a new school, while playing confidante to her single mother, emergency doctor Claudia (an excellent Roz Hammond).
There’s also credible storylines involving university student Sully (Koa Nuen), who works in his mother (Carina Hoang) Iris’s grocery store, and his Iranian friend Ash Jafari (Phoenix Raei). Considerations have been made of even the smallest detail: in one scene, ex-cop Pav (Marcus Graham) and his kids, who are not Asian, eat takeaway at the beach with chopsticks. Australia is large; its people contain multitudes.
The Heights is worlds apart from Neighbours and Home and Away; it took both soaps three decades to write in storylines with gay characters last year, and excepting short-lived stints featuring token ethnic families (the Lims on Ramsay Street in the early 90s, for example, who were accused of eating a resident’s missing dog) the White Australia Policy might as well still be in place in their universe.
Episodes of The Heights are punctuated with wry one-liners and genuine warmth, particularly between parents and their children. Vietnamese store-owner Iris has a touch of The Family Law humour about her, issuing blunt missives that are endearingly familiar to children of Asian parents. “It was just an idea,” says Sully to his mother, after she rejects a suggestion of his. “So was communism,” Iris whips back.
For a culturally diverse series, it feels a little on the nose to feature an apparently alcoholic Irish character who repeatedly laments the local pub’s closure – and there’s cliche to be found in the chronically overworked corporate lawyer, Leonie (Shari Sebbens), who keeps interrupting conversations with family to compulsively answer her ringing phone.
The soap – and it is a soap, with early storylines replete with an abandoned baby, a disputed will and an absconding daughter – is not perfect, but its ambition outshines its flaws. The Heights doesn’t baulk at addressing class issues – but in a manner not as overtly comedic but no less tongue-in-cheek than fellow ABC series Upper Middle Bogan. “Our house prices would go up 20% if those towers weren’t there,” a relatively affluent character says to Leonie, adding when she senses she may have caused offence: “Don’t look at me like that. I give to Oxfam.”
The series shines in its treatment of young people, who are navigating their identities, sexual orientation and sense of purpose, and in its varied depiction of family life, warts and all – single motherhood, separated parents, siblings who know exactly how to grind each other’s gears.
The pleasure in watching the series derives not necessarily from seeing your own story reflected on screen, but rather viewing something that approximates the lived experiences of most Australians. It lends The Heights a believable familiarity – and perhaps the lasting power to rival its commercial counterparts.
• The Heights premieres its first two episodes on the ABC at 8.30pm Friday, with the first 16 episodes available to stream on iView
